Wax and Wane
by Spontaneite
Summary: Werewolf!AU. For as long as history remembers, the Strife family have defended Nibelheim, living apart from the humans they protect. But times are changing - werewolves are no longer welcome, and a sickness grows from the heart of the Reactor. Cloud, the first of the new generation of Strifes, will be the first in centuries to leave the mountain, in search of a future for his kind.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Our Werewolves Are Different, but only some of them.

Wax and Wane

Chapter 1

.1.

On the far edge of Nibelheim, unsheltered by the mountain's cold stone, and perpetually smothered in ice and snow, stands a quiet, solitary house. It is a queer thing, a lonely thing, that scarcely ever breathes smoke from its chimneys or bears light in its windows, and it is one of the oldest houses in the village, built to stand the test of time. No one goes near it, except children on dares to knock on the door or peer through the frosted glass, usually on eerie full-moon nights accompanied by much drama and the occasional horror story. It is the subject of many folk tales, rumours, and village legends, and it is wholly and thoroughly abandoned. Except for a day each season.

Skulda Strife comes down from the mountain as a herald of the changing seasons. She clears the ice and snow from her roof and walls, she sweeps out the dust and lights a fire in the hearth, and then she comes to make her rounds of the town. She speaks with the Mayor, sells fur and meat and tooth and scale at the markets, and buys all the little things that can't be built from what the wilds provide. Invariably she is pointed at, whispered and stared at, and keeps gossip lively for weeks after she leaves. Invariably, in the weeks after she leaves, a new season ushers in. The town lives and works by her comings and goings, for it is known that when one of her kind comes, it is to herald a new season.

When the pattern breaks, it is never good news.

When the dragons over-breed and a bold fledgling comes to harangue the livestock, Strife comes to Nibelheim. When wolves not her own intrude on the town, snapping and snarling, Strife comes to Nibelheim. When a new season draws near, Strife comes to Nibelheim. So it has been, and so it shall always be.

Until, one day, Strife comes to Nibelheim to herald Winter, and doesn't leave.

Whispers wax and wane like the moon above as smoke trickles from the two chimneys, candles dance in the windows, and Skulda Strife does not return to the mountain.

Then, wolves come to Nibelheim. Not the strays, the desperate ones apart from kin and territory, which are a danger to all in the village. But Skulda's wolves, her ravening horde. First one, then two, then three until finally a massive pack of over forty individuals are yapping and snarling and wrestling on the edge of the pine forest, wandering between the trees and the lonely house.

Three individuals among them are larger than the rest, command more presence, and most visibly of all, are adorned. Wood-bead necklaces, metal arm-bands, even earrings decorate their frames, weaving into the fur. In some, fangs and claws flash as ornaments, and even the tell-tale shine of materia weaves into the twine. It speaks very clearly of what they are. And then, of course, there is Skulda herself – and never were there wolves as large as Strifes. She _towers_ over the rest, more thoroughly adorned than all of the other three put together, and positively_ laden_ with Materia – most noticeably, a single red, glimmering like blood from her chest – and she slips between skin and fur with impudence. Human, she looks _tiny_, puny, much shorter than the average woman; it's almost a mockery.

On the fourth day, they finally come with Skulda to the village. The exiles stand beside her just as wild and dishevelled, as if they belong. They visit their families one by one, and then leave again, melting slowly into fur and fangs at the edge of the forest.

On the fifth day, the first person dares to ask Missus Strife why, exactly, she and the wolves are there. And she declares, wearing a sunny smile, that she is expecting.

The gossip which is a small town's lifeblood positively _explodes._

.2.

Skulda Strife's pregnancy is in the same shameful, unspeakable manner as it always is for her family. She lives all year with the wolves, all her life with the wolves, and with neither partner nor husband comes to the ancestral cottage with a quickening in her womb. She remains active through all of the autumn and all of the winter, disappearing each evening with the wolves yipping hunt-calls at her heels, and the nights are full of howling.

It's a frightful time for everyone, needless to say. No one likes having savages around, or wolves, or exiles, and most of all, no one wants a _Strife_ staying so long in the area. Which, as memory tells, she will certainly be doing. For _years_, even!

.3.

She is a sentinel, a guard, a protector of the village, even if the village has forgotten. She knows her duty. She passes the months as she always does, leading her wolves against the many monsters of the mountain, glutting them on flesh and blood, but returns each day to the little stone cottage that she was born in. Crooning softly to the smooth curve of her belly, she weaves teeth and claws into leather cord and twine, shaping strong lengths. She weaves materia into little wire cages and then they into the leather and twine, and from the smith in town she commissions the supplies she will need to properly provide for her child.

Over five gradual months, her child grows, and her belly grows heavy, and she can't run quite as far as she is used to. But they know what to do; they won't suffer her absence, so long as it is short.

It is late Spring when she senses her time approaching. She descends to the cottage basement and scrapes for hours at the cold earth at the centre where there is no floor, digging herself a small, dark alcove which feels _safe._ Then she stuffs herself full of meat, retreats to the den, and waits.

.4.

Skulda heaves for hours in agony, keening and growling all through the night. She hears her wolves pacing around the cottage, on guard, on alert during the alpha female's most vulnerable time.

Then, finally, with the half-moon high above, Skulda gives birth to a healthy son.

She names him Cloud.

.5.

She bites away the birthing film from his mouth, then licks the whole of it away. She feeds him and ties his first pendant around his neck, and then she puts Materia in his hands as they ripple into being from paws. His tiny fingers close tightly on the little green orb, his wide, dark eyes too young yet to see anything other than how it glows. But he is a Strife to his bones; he stares at it, fascinated, and does not let go.

.6.

She stays with him, underground, for five days, murmuring and growling and nuzzling at him. She is half out of her human mind, _wolf_ is strong in her for this, instinct knows what to do with a wolf cub, but still she pushes through to teach him the ways of Strife as well as Wolf.

At the end of those five days, she leaves him in the den and wanders out in wolf-form to the cool air of a Nibelheim night. She goes to the forest's edge and waits, patiently, while all the pack yip and murmur with delight, clamouring around her like excited puppies, all competing to catch the scent of the new little one. Finally she grows tired and shoves past them, stuffing herself on the fresh-killed carcass nearby. She gathers the scents of the more important individuals and then withdraws back to the den, taking some choice items with her.

Little Cloud, in the absence of her warmth, has shifted seamlessly into his own beautiful downy fur, whining with a cub's voice for her return. She presses him back into the loose earth and feeds him. Then she introduces the pack members' scents to him as they hang on her fur, one by one, and with growls and tackles and little nips at his scruff teaches him how he should behave in their presence. Days pass, and Skulda flits in and out of the den, bearing each time new scents and new things for her child. His eyes pale to the same clear, beautiful blue as hers, and begin to flash in the meagre light from the cottage above.

.7.

She puts a dagger in his fingers when he is two weeks old. He grasps happily at it, as does he anything she gives him, and she waits patiently as he does what he usually does with his gifts – waves it around and bites it with toothless gums.

She takes it back from him as he yelps at the pain of blood blooming from his mouth and a thin line along his face. She watches his form ripple between skin and fur in distress, setting in a little wolf shape that curls up and whimpers. A few minutes in she pushes him over and licks the blood away, watching the blood slow steadily beneath his fur, and the beginnings of healing. She waits for him to become a furless newborn again, and then puts the knife back in his hand. He first tries to push it away, frightened, but after much urging reluctantly accepts it, holding it far more warily with his stubby little fingers.

He has learned.

.8.

A Strife infant does not grow as quickly as wolves do. A wolf mother would have been out of the den, with the cub, in the space of three weeks. Skulda, urged by her atavistic wolf-mind, recognises that he is yet far too small, and stays in the den with him day after day, the weeks passing like water through her fingers.

He is too young for human words, but the language of wolves is simple, and comes easily when he has the right shape. He is young, but Strife enough to be taught things.

One by one she presses Materia into his fingers, sniffing at him, encouraging him. She takes them, periodically, and sets little embers into the soil, little static jolts, little stabs of cold. Skulda gives them back and croons at him until, finally, he makes his first sparks at three weeks of age. She bowls him over and smothers him in wolf-praise, happy and proud.

.9.

Magic and Materia are the toys of a Strife child; they need no other. Skulda watches, brimming with pride, as week by week he sits in the dark and learns the way of Materia and its power. He tires quickly at first, but his progress is quick, and day by day he plays longer. The channels that connect magic to the soul imprint themselves in an almost discernible process – five days after the first sparks come the first fire, a little yellow thing that bites at his fingers like the knife had bitten his flesh, and he drops the orb and whimpers, cradling his hand until it heals, and then fire too is something he has learned.

Cloud learns the danger of electricity just as quickly, but ice takes him longer. He is six weeks old when, fascinated, he realises that ice is physical in a way that lightning and fire simply aren't, and spins bizarre, elaborate shapes of frost into the den. He has created an alarmingly large _block_ of ice when he begins to realise that it's _cold_, and he doesn't like it so much after all, but Skulda won't let him out of the den or snuggle next to her for warmth. Instead, she hands him the Fire Materia over and over until he realises the ways of ice and fire, and how they can ail each other.

Soon, though, Skulda begins to grow bored. She has a firm, instinctive block against the idea of taking her offspring out of the den early, and of course leaves periodically to feed herself, but a mother can only watch a child play with fire for so long. After a while she brings her crafts down to the den, and some days weaves leather and twine and tooth and claw together with glimmering shards of Materia that catch Cloud's eye. He reaches for them, only to be disappointed in how they refuse to answer his call like the spheres do. Other days, she carves at stray branches with her knives, making beads, pendants, and little figures – which Cloud promptly appropriates, in most cases.

The first time Cloud sets her on fire and giggles as she jumps up and snarls, she growls deeply and threateningly at him, and then sets _him_ on fire with the mastered Materia she has around her neck. He shrieks and then howls, going wolf-shape, for the five seconds she sustains it and whimpers for a further three, whereupon she casts a very slight Restore at him. Then she hands him the Materia. No fool child, he quickly makes the connection, and is soon literally _glowing_ with health. He isn't very happy with her for the next few hours, and Skulda knows that human mothers would be horrified. But neither she nor Cloud are human, and pain is the best teacher in the world.

.10.

Cloud is too young to learn words. Too young for human concepts, or knife-work, or wood-carving, or weaving. But Materia is natural. It is a part of the world, as much as water and stone are, and using the magic you are born with is as natural as moving. As natural as how the wolf runs, the fish swims, and predator strikes prey; but as in so many other ways, humans have grown apart from nature. By the time youths first hold a glowing sphere in their hands, their body has forgotten the instinct to call at it, and they will forever be crippled in its ways.

But Skulda held Materia in her hand mere minutes after she first breathed. She knows magic like she knows her own scent, and her son will be no different.

.11.

After four months underground, Skulda casts an eye over her son and admits to herself, warily, that it's about time he emerge.

So, finally, she sighs and ties Cloud's Materia – _his_, that she spawned by mastering her own – into elaborate wire nets, wire that she weaves into and around the same leather cord and twine she uses for almost all jewellery she makes. Fire, Ice, and Lightning she fastens around his little furry neck, which he noses at, puzzled. Restore she fixes into a sturdy arm-band that fixes onto his stubby little leg, front right. She nips at his ear when he messes with them, then ripples into fur and pushes him out of the den.

He is alarmed at first, squirming around her nose, but then realises where he is being led, and stumbles excitedly alongside her. She has to carry him up the stairs by his scruff, and he hangs bonelessly until put down, whereupon he comes to life and skitters clumsily around the little cottage in delight, sniffing and squeaking at everything. She lets him investigate for ten minutes, then rolls her eyes and pushes him out of the door.

Little Cloud freezes for a moment, inhaling the _hundreds_ of new scents and peering at the bright, bewildering world around him. Then, the escalating excitement of the pack, waiting at the tree-line, catches his attention. The massive crowd of individuals, ears erect, shove and pace around in a frenzy, all fixated on the pup whose scent Skulda has been acquainting them with for the past four months. Their scents, in turn, are something Cloud is familiar with; she leads him to the pack and watches as they all nose at him, all crowd around in the same delirious excitement as they'd shown when they first scented his birth on her.

She is relieved to see that she taught him correctly – he knows to roll over and show his belly to the older, bigger wolves. He also, to her surprise, begins nipping at their faces in a way she hadn't taught him. She would need to start feeding him meat soon.

After the pack are mostly done, Skulda shrugs out of her fur and picks up her pup, coaxing him into his ungainly, chubby little human form, and swaddles him in the furs she'd brought out with her. She brings him to Grend, Kjora, and Futhar, the exiles in her pack who still keep names. They ripple into humanity and carefully, one by one, hold him in their arms, smiling as he squirms like the puppy he is in their grasp. She tells them his name, then takes him into town and shows him about before the staring eyes, presenting him and naming him to them all.

"Are those Materia, around his neck?" Mayor Lockhart asks uneasily, to break the awkward silence he'd spent staring at her baby bemusedly.

"Yes." She answers, calmly, and taps at the middle on his pendant, the Ice. Perfectly happy to follow her direction, frost begins to curl in the air, then falls. Unused to being off the ground, Cloud watches it descend to the ground, startled, as the Mayor flinches. "The first thing a Strife child learns is how to use Materia."

Watching the ice form and shatter like grass as it tumbles, he haltingly questions "is that safe?" and then jolts visibly when Cloud, wanting to get to the ground, ripples into fluffy pup-form and tries to wriggle out of her hands.

He stares at her child in horror. Like he's something wrong.

Skulda hides her own ice behind a razor-smile, showing teeth, and replies "perfectly." Then she bites admonishingly at her son's ear, and walks away without so much as a goodbye.

.12.

With Cloud old enough to be left without her for fair periods of time, Skulda assigns Kjora to his care and for the first time in _too long_ takes to wolf form and rallies the pack with a high hunt-howl – they take it up and the edge of the forest comes alive with wolfsong, thin and loud and chilling as she _runs_ into the trees, the others at her heels. Her pack has hunted in her absence, and her alpha male defended the territory, but they've had to remain close to town, to her and her cub, and the borders have gone unpatrolled for too long.

It is as she'd expected – further from town, further into the forest, monsters are abundant, having bred into a frenzy in the large pack's absence. Her wolves themselves are starving – they've hunted the acres near Nibelheim till nothing remains, and she knows some of them will grow weak soon if they don't eat. So, in a frenzy, she conducts the kind of slaughter that her father had warned her of, for the days she'd have her own child, and stay in one place for far longer than wolves are meant to.

Blood-drenched, exhausted, and very happy, she and her pack haul carcasses back to the edge of town and pile them together, and the massive pack falls on the meat hungrily as soon as she takes her fill of the best parts. Cloud greets her exuberantly, licking and nipping at her muzzle, and with consideration she regurgitates a little meat for him. He takes to it well, but she knows it will be a while yet before he is weaned.

It takes two weeks to properly secure the territory. She loses three wolves culling dragons, and the whole pack howls for their absence when night comes. The loners skittering on the edges of their range, hearing the vacancy, warily offer their voices, far away, and so in mere days she gets back the missing numbers. It is the way of wolves.

The chiefest blessing of having such a large pack, though, is that no other than the most desperate of packs dare encroach on the territory, so long as they continue to hear the numbers from the night howling. She marks the edges of the range to deter any of the bolder wolves, and returns to business, culling dragons. Before long she has tanned a number of new lovely dragonscale hides, and woven all the teeth and claws she doesn't sell onto jewellery.

Kjora remains the primary care-giver while she is away in daylight hours – Skulda trusts wolves to care properly for Cloud, but not to raise him. He is a child of both worlds, and she knows well the dangers of letting him become too wild. There is a _reason_ a Strife always leads.

.13.

There is no escaping what they are.

Skulda is adult, and she is a Strife. When the Planet sings each month to the full moon, Lifestream rising and flaring beneath her feet, she can resist the way that delirium pulls at her mind, the way that base, wild instinct rears as a tide to wash all else away.

Humans call the beasts that roam the lands 'monsters', and Nibel wolves are in that category. In reality, most are only animals who bear magic, and attack and prey upon each other as their natures dictate – but what makes humanity deem them monstrous is that each and every one of those strong enough, magical enough, with enough lifestream running in their veins, will attack any human that draws near without remorse. It is not always prey drive, though many will certainly eat the corpse. It is not always their territorial nature, either. It is simply because they are humans, and humans feel _wrong_.

Kjora, Futhar, and Grend can't feel it. They were born human, and raised human. For all that they use Materia now, _they_ feel distinctly unpleasant when in human skin. But she wasn't born among mankind. She can feel unease flare in her every time she draws near to a human, a species with _such_ abundant magic inherent to them, who let it _rot_ within. Unused, magic grows stagnant, insular, the channels grow thin and it feels _disgusting_ to her sense, just as if their flesh were rotting and she could smell the stench of it, as if there is a sickness beneath the skin that needs to be bitten out like sour pus in a bad wound. After so many years, she is inured to it, but...

When the moon waxes, it pulls at the tides. It pulls at the Lifestream just the same, and it rises beneath the Planet's shell, quivering and bubbling, _so _close to the surface. Her magic rises with it, singing just the same, but humans' – theirs is still, stagnant, dead, and when everything is _moving _and the sense of life is deafening it feels _so, so_ abhorrent, it's unendurable.

It is a well recorded phenomenon that monster attacks are far more common at the full moon.

Cloud reacts to the smell of _wrong_ amplified a hundredfold by the moon just as she'd expect. But if she could learn to resist it, so could he.

.14.

There are a few other cubs in the pack who Cloud plays with, but they quickly outstrip him in growth and soon he is without peers. He thus amuses himself by harassing adults and playing with Materia – and Skulda is glad that her exiles supervise him, because otherwise many a house-fire would have begun. As he grows more proficient, she begins to travel regularly between the mountain's many mako springs and caves, searching shrewdly for natural Materia. But they are scarcer than they were once, and she gathers few that she didn't have already. In the end, most are of the sort that won't be suitable until Cloud is older – Mystify, Poison, Transform...they're invariably bad news for whatever he would practice them on, and he isn't old enough to know better.

After some consideration, though, she bullies her exiles for the unlevelled spawns of those she'd given them years ago, and gives Cloud one new orb: Earth.

Earth delights the little boy. He laughs with glee as the dirt reshapes around him, and he is shortly throwing it in people's faces.

.15.

At eight months, Cloud's milk teeth grow in, needle-sharp in wolf shape, but mostly flat as human. He begins to gnaw on everything, and Skulda's only defences against merciless assault of her tail are well-applied jolts of static, and some Barrier when he gets too annoying.

It means, for one thing, that she starts letting him chew his own meat, and for another stops letting him anywhere near her mammaries.

It also means that he is now at genuine risk of accidentally infecting someone.

_end chapter_


	2. Chapter 2

Wax and Wane

Chapter 2

.16.

Cloud is a year and a half of age when Skulda tracks down a young, reasonably weak monster, a sonic speed that she catches in her teeth and mauls so that it can't fly. Then she puts it in front of Cloud and lets loose a quick, high rally call. His ears perk instinctively at the sound he has learned means _hunt, _and therefore _food_, and he comes forwards to bat at the creature warily, sniffing at the stench of its blood and fear. It attacks him, viciously, and he backs away with a yelp, backing away again when it advances, screeching.

He recoils as his injury, a large cut on his leg, begins to bleed, head whipping around to stare pleadingly at her for help, whimpering. Human maternal instinct screams that he is _too young_, and to _help him_ before he dies, but her wolf mind and rational thought knows better. He is a young Strife, and it will take far worse injuries to risk his life. Still...

She helpfully sends a spike of ice at it, to get things going a little. Cloud's whimpers stop immediately, and he straightens up, intrigued, as the creature keens in pain.

Tentatively, he sets it on fire.

Encouraged by her murmurs and the monster's frantic attempts to escape, her son's prey-drive awakens, and he comes forwards, biting at it as he attacks it intermittently with magic. He quickly learns to skitter out of the way of its attacks, and though it takes him a long while of him more or less playing with the poor creature as he wears it down (the monster _is_ high level, even if it is injured) it eventually concedes to death, falling still with a shudder, bleeding sluggishly all over.

Skulda takes human shape to murmur praise at him and rub his ears, then leaves him to chew awkwardly at his first kill.

.17.

"Wof," Cloud announces to the world at large from his position on the cottage's wolfskin rug, and Skulda immediately whips around to praise the uttering of his first word. The boy, who spends more time in human form now that it isn't quite so immobile and clumsy, beams at her and begins jabbering nonsense at her, a bizarre amalgam of almost-words and wolf sounds.

She might one day tell her son how concerned for his human development she'd been getting. She herself had learned to speak late – it's only natural, growing up with wolves – but three years of age was a bit much, even for wolf-children. She'd witnessed his intelligence and shrewdness, of course, but speech and human manner was different. Leave it too long and he might never learn. The Sentinels, certainly, have human intelligence, but no understanding of their ways at all. They are _wolf_, through and through.

As it is, she is only incredibly relieved when that day proves to be Cloud's verbal breakthrough, and he begins to spend more and more of his time in her presence human, inspired by this new power of speech. Wolf-talk, while delightfully bereft of lies and hidden meaning, is rather simple, and does not suit the complex patterns his thoughts would be starting to take from her guidance.

.18.

Her son, after an hour of happily fumbling with a block of soft wood and a dagger, presents to her a crude four-legged figure which is probably a wolf. She smiles and praises what is actually a very accomplished work of carving, for a four year old, and smiles more at the way the scents of his delight and enjoyment so vividly colour the air. Then she inspects it more closely, and tilts her head a little. Maybe it isn't a wolf at all.

"What is it, Cloud?" She asks, finally. "Another wolf?"

He goes quiet for a second, his young face pensive. "Wolf person?" He offers, tentatively. "Like us. And Kjora and Futhar and Grend." He still speaks with a bit of a growl, and a half-whining edge to his softer consonants, but she's mostly trained it out by now. It's the half-wolf, half-Nibelheim accent that they will always have.

"Ah." She murmurs, turning the figure over in her hands. Yes, she can see it. The limbs and torso are all thinner, longer than they are for his wolf carvings. And only the top has the messy splintered carving he apparently feels represents fur. "It's _very_ good, then."

He preens, and before he can reach for another block she sternly orders him to Esuna and Cure his cuts. She doesn't want them healing with splinters underneath.

Cloud does as he is told, green light running for a few moments over his fingers he touches to the Materia, then he retrieves his knife and another block of the soft wood she'd cut herself from the centre of a bough. He stares at it with uncommon solemnity for several moments, then speaks. "Ma?" He voices, slowly.

Skulda glances over to meet his eyes with her own, both the same, familiar blue, as clear as the skies on those rare sunny days. "Yes, Cloud?"

"What are we?"

She considers her words carefully before speaking. "We," she answers slowly, "are Strifes. We are an ancient line born of beast blood, and have a duty to protect humans. But the rest of the world would call us werewolves."

He nods slowly. "...Yeah. That's what I heard." Another pause. "And other people can catch it. If we bite them, or if they get our blood in them. Like a bug."

"Yes, Cloud. Just like a bug." Her heart _hurts._ Just four years old, and already exposed to the _horrible_ way people view their kind these days. "They call it lycanthropy. They call it a disease."

"...Are we a disease, ma?" Her boy asks, softly.

"_No,_ Cloud." She refutes fiercely, pulling him close to nuzzle at his unruly hair. "What we are is a _blessing._"

.19.

Cloud will always remember the day he was told, _finally_, that he could accompany the pack when they went hunting. He'd have to stay well back, but if he were positioned right, he could chip in with his magic.

He is brimming with youthful exuberance, in a little wolf-shape that isn't quite so clumsy any more, his fifth year bringing a growth spurt in both forms which is more than welcome. His mother fastens all his Materia, talismans, and miscellaneous adornments onto his small frame, then nods with satisfaction and declares him ready for his first pack outing. Both she and two of the exiles have to cast Hastes on him for him to keep pace with the massive adult wolves, baying to the skies their fervour for the hunt.

In the forest, searching for a scent, is when he first meets what his mother calls the Sentinels.

They are Nibel wolves, but _massive_, the size only werewolves should be. And despite being the grey-and-brown of all the others, their eyes gleam a blue that is very familiar. They wear each a single talisman, the central carving in empty blue materia accompanied up the twine by six carved dragon fangs. All five of them, two visibly very old, come forwards to sniff at him, eyes bearing a startling intelligence. His mother says only that they are as brothers to the Strifes, and should be treated with the greatest of respect. He sniffs at them curiously, scenting the sure blood-tells that these wolves are kin, and his young mind wonders.

Then the trackers catch the scent of the yearling dragon, and the hunt begins.

.20.

His mother gives him one fang as a reward for his contribution, and tells him that when he first leads a successful dragon-hunt, he will have all the teeth, all the claws, and every inch of its gleaming skin as trophy.

.21.

Cloud is learning basic carving and clay-shaping from his mother, not long after his first hunt, when a disaster almost happens.

It is the full moon, and she has all four of her werewolves in the cottage, going to the window every now and then to snarl at her pack, and remind them that the human town isn't for attacking. Her three exiles have control now, after these long years of struggling, but she still doesn't entirely trust them without a strong alpha to keep them docile. And her son – well. He's worryingly lacking in control for his age – the stench of humanity is still too deeply offensive for him to withstand. Even if they left for a hunt, he'd never keep himself from following the trails he shouldn't.

For the whole of the first night and most of the morning, everything goes smoothly. At noon she has to briefly leave the cottage to break up a fight in the pack – it's natural, and common. Usually for the three full moon days, they'd be running, hunting, letting off the high energy. But stuck here by the youth of her cub, who will not be able to restrain himself during any full-moon hunt, and forbidden from attacking the humans...the monster energy of her wolves drives them to fight each other. Sometimes it goes too far, and the injuries kill them. So she sprints up to them, bowls the instigator over, and holds him down with her long teeth over his jugular, growling, until he goes limp and submissive. Then she does the same to the other, and three other agitated wolves for good measure. And then she returns to the cottage.

This process repeats numerous times throughout the day, and she herself gets into a fight twice – first with her alpha male, and second with Grend, who had begun snapping at Futhar, losing his better senses for a few seconds too long. She beats both of them into submission, and then just wrestles for the fun of it, careful to prevent it from getting bloody with moon-rage.

The issue comes , though, at sunset.

Yet again obliged to go chase her pack back into the tree-line and away from each other's throats, Skulda is gone for less than ten minutes before she comes back to a sight that chills her blood.

.22.

"Nuh-uh!" Little Tifa Lockhart refuses, crossing her arms and scrunching her face. "I'm not stupid! No way!"

"Everyone knows werewolves only eat you at night." Geir cajoles brightly, all smiles and freckles and orange hair, leaning on the crumbling brick wall by the path. He is a little older than the black haired daughter of the mayor, but not exactly wiser. "The door's open. It wouldn't be open if it was dangar...dangeroush. It'll be fine!" His two friends, the brothers Mund and Hal, join in with childish delight at a good adventure, nodding at the _obvious_ greater knowledge of their peer.

"No! It's a stupid idea and I'm not doing it." She sticks out her tongue.

"Just go up and look in." He urges, and pulls out the heavy guns. "I _dare _you."

Tifa visibly hesitates, wavering under the power of the Dare and the potential social humiliation of being too cowardly to fulfil it. "I...no!"

Geir grins. "_Double dare._"

"_Triple_ dare!" Adds Hal, eagerly.

"_Kwadroople _dare!"

"_Infinity-_"

"Alright!" She snaps. "Alright, I'll do it." They all cheer and urge her on. Tifa inhales, steeling herself, and without her entourage, hesitantly begins walking down the narrow path which leads to the distant Strife house, whose door is just visibly open.

It's not a particularly well-maintained path. Wrought of the mountain's stone, like everything else in Nibelheim, many of the rocks protrude or are missing, and are not worn quite so smooth as those in the village are, from the frequent foot-traffic. Hardy mountain lichens texture the stone here and there, having crept from their thick clusters in the wall-corners, and even some stubborn mosses. She's been aware that it was late in the afternoon, and that the sun was low, but she isn't prepared for how the sun is suddenly blotted out by the mountain peak in its descent, casting everything into shadow. Everything is at once colder and darker, and as she approaches she swears she can hear snarls and growls in the distance, from the trees.

She watches the distant tree-line keenly as she approaches, and sees traces of movement there. It feels ominous, forbidden, the combined thrill of doing something she ought not to along with the undeniable fear of those dark shapes by the tree-line. She focuses so intently on the forest as she walks that, with a shock, she suddenly finds herself before the door, and realises with horror that there are animal sounds _in there_,too, quieter, but definitely-

A strident, yapping cry sounds from inside. Frozen in fear, Tifa forces herself to crane her head and glance inside, and almost _passes out_ from what she sees. _Three_ massive wolves, all staring at her, ears straight up and heads low, very soft growls in their throats. Their stillness is far more unnerving than if they'd been pacing, even twitching – she's a Nibelheim girl, she knows what a predator looks like when its prey-drive is humming.

And then, there's a little one – just a big puppy, really, and paler than the others, struggling beneath the paws of the largest wolf. Wriggling, snapping, and-

There is a kind of..._flash_, and suddenly the wolf jolts back with a yelp. But Tifa isn't particularly concerned about _that_ wolf, because the littlest one is running _straight_ _for her_.

Abruptly, she finds her legs, turns, and _runs._

She is certain of being chased, but doesn't look back or pause for a second. Until there is suddenly the sound of impact, a high pitched whine, and a loud, _angry _snarl.

At that, Tifa turns and stares. She finds the largest wolf she has ever seen, gripping the small one roughly by the back of its neck and shaking it, growling lowly. Then it drops to the ground, frozen, unmoving. She notices, dimly, that the big wolf is wearing Materia, and one of them is glowing very brightly.

The wolf seems to distort in front of her. It takes several moments, as if a struggle, but the familiar form of Skulda Strife forms before her eyes. Except...not. Her eyes have an unholy gleam, her teeth protrude sharply around her lips, and her hands are curved with claws.

"_What_...do you think you_rrrre_ doing, idiot child?!" She demands, in a voice half-growl, clearly an effort to voice. "If _ahh_'d been _seconds_ later, you'd be _joining us_ as a _wolf!_"

"...I'm sorry!" She wails, after a few moments, and buries her face in her scarf. "It was a dare! Geir and the others said werewolves are only dan-ger-ous at night!"

The woman stares for several long seconds, eyes blazing, and utterly still. Then she hisses _"They lied._ Get away from here! I'll probably have to fight off the whole pack from coming after you!"

She needs no further prompting. She turns and resumes sprinting, noting in the back of her mind that the three boys are _long_ gone, and that she is going to _kill_ them.

.23.

"Do you remember what happened, on the second moon-day?" Skulda demands of her son, the moment he seems able to hold both his human form and his wits together. He stares at her, blue eyes still a little glazed, and tilts his head in a very wolfish manner, flexing his fingers anxiously on the stone floor.

"...Not a lot." He answers, flinching back from the fierceness of her gaze. "I...think I remember a girl, though. The Mayor's daughter?"

"Yes." She confirms, icily. "Cloud. You're five years old, and still you don't have enough control. You're a _Strife_, and you almost attacked someone! This _can't_ happen, Cloud, it _can't._ Do you understand that?" She steps close, right in front of him, looming considerably above his child height. Her eyes are like _daggers, _her teeth violently exposed and every one of his wolf instincts scream for submission.

"...Yes, Ma." He answers, quiet, eyes wide, shrinking down and baring his throat on reflex. She grabs at it instantly, the bite of her claws almost as petrifying as her teeth would have been, had she been wolf-form. He stays still, as still as he possibly can, whining lowly in his throat as he avoids her eyes.

"Tell me. The first story."

He stutters for a moment, half-terrified by this side of his mother, the Strife _alpha_. Then he begins to recite the tale he knows by heart. " 'I-I...In the oldest of days, when the Planet was still young, and the Ancients were pilgrims of life across the land, the Ancient Who Came to the Mountain bade Mada Skathi defend the peoples of the cold land, for the days were long and vicious there, and she could not abandon her duty. To make her strong, the Ancient-'"

And so he spoke it, the whole rambling tale, before the flinty eyes of his fierce, indomitable mother, shrinking before her gaze like a rabbit in the torchlight. He feels so tense by the time he finishes that he trembles, and glances up at her warily, just for a second.

"Good. Again." She says, unmoving.

Cloud swallows, lowers his eyes again in submission, and shakily does as she bids.

"In the oldest of days, when the Planet was still young..."

.24.

In the end, he recites the First Story five times before she is satisfied.

"Remember it." Skulda tells him, firm. "Wherever you go, and wherever you mark your territory, remember that you are a _Strife_, and you are blessed with the wolf blood. You can withstand wounds humans can't. You can _feel_ the Planet's essence like no human ever can, and your duty of protection runs two thousand years deep. There is a voice in you that wakes whenever you touch Materia, or step close to a mako spring – _listen_ to it, when you feel your mind slipping away, and _remember_ that _everything you are_ is to protect. _Not_ to destroy."

.26.

Skulda takes him alone to the forest's edge. She tells him to follow, and then runs.

It's all a little wolf can do to keep up with her – the mother wolf, and her long, loping stride, that devours miles more ravenously than any living creature upon the Planet. He runs until his lungs burn so much he literally _can't_ breathe, until he feels like his body is falling apart, and has to keep himself awash in spells just to keep going – and then, too, he can feel the tiny reservoir of his magic running low.

He doesn't notice his surroundings, he can't afford to. He jumps the boulders and fallen trees when he needs to, but beyond the constant blur of passing forest, he can't say where he followed his mother, nor how far. Only that finally, _finally_, it ended, beside the yawning mouth of a cave he has never seen before in his life.

Cloud collapses in the dirt at his mother's feet, panting and wheezing and near-crying with pain. He watches blearily as her form ripples into humanity, then kneels by his side, fingers running gently across the long mane on his head. "This is the cave of blessing," She tells him, softly. "You did well, to follow me all the way here. But you must go further. Get up." Her fingers withdraw. She waits.

To get to his feet then is the most difficult thing he has ever done. Slowly, laboriously, he heaves up and stands unsteadily on his four exhausted limbs. She smiles, and licks him briefly on the snout. Then she stands, turns, and walks into the darkness of the cave. Wobbly, he totters forwards after her.

And then he discovers that the cave isn't so dark after all. It's _full_ of mako springs, green-blue and shining. He stares around in amazement, awe of the place pervading through his exertion-wrecked mind. He has never seen such a thing. And..._'cave of blessing'..._

"My father told me that this was a holy place. Where, in the old times, a Strife could come and hear the faintest whispers of the Planet, as if they were Ancients. The Lifestream has always welled here. It has even been said that here was where Mada Skathi was gifted." She lowers her head, and Cloud suffers a jolt of uncertainty at the regret in her eyes. "But something changed. Recently, in my own lifetime..." She shakes her head. "But that will come later. Much later. First..."

Skulda kneels again. She plucks his necklaces, arm-bands and materia away, one by one, until his body is bare of all but his own thick fur. He looks up at her, instincts screaming, and whines softly.

She picks him up by the scruff and tosses him into the nearest mako pool.

.27.

Cloud doesn't know how long he's in there, burning, every inch of his fur, skin and soul scalded by the green, acidic tide. It feels like an _age._

But then he's _out_, blessedly free, mako dripping from his fur in splattering sheets, and the cold mountain air soothing his ravaged nerves. He feels himself being gently lowered to the even colder stone floor, and curls up, tail between his legs, whimpering pitifully. His every sense is alive with pain, and he can't think, can't hear, can't feel anything but the sickening green burn.

He doesn't know how long he lays there, quivering and insensate. But then he begins to pick out a low, soothing hum, that steadily over a timeless period forms into words.

"-said it was always harder for the males. That sometimes, drastic action had to be taken to train you in the sensitivity you need, to be a Strife." The voice is low, gentle, and deeply sad. "I'm sorry, Cloud, my little cub." A pause, as his ears tentatively perk up and turn in her direction. "Can you hear me?"

He whines softly in response.

"Good." Skulda murmurs. "Now, Cloud. I told you, earlier. Whenever you cast a spell, you reach for Materia with something inside you. Something as natural and as vital as blood. You reached for it on the second moon-day, and shocked Kjora without using Materia. Reach for it now, and _listen._"

Cloud _struggles._ He's still in so much pain, his nerves on fire, burning at him with every twitch of movement. But he struggles, and does what she says. He reaches into the little flows, like underground rivers, in all of his limbs, that stem from the source of his magic, that absolute subterranean core of life within him that he knows better than his own scent...

And he flinches with shock, as he touches it, and the magic-sense runs across his mind. It's _strong._ Loud, vibrant, so powerful it's dizzying, like the howls of a pack three-hundred strong, _overwhelming_. It has _never _been like this.

"It's loud, isn't it?" His mother remarks. "Part of that is where we are – here, the Planet's voice is louder. But it's also the mako. Listen deeper. You can hear Her."

He reaches, deafening himself in the sheer noise of the energy, deeper and deeper, until it's so loud it's silent, and he can't hear a thing – all he has is a sense of ubiquitous brightness, burning through his eyes. And there, in that absolute, searing silence, he hears it.

_/Floor of dead pine nourishing soil/frost takes life of rabbit/falcon-egg hatches on the cliff-edge two more dead in shell/clouds gather overhead rain soon/_

Cloud freezes.

_/mother-dragon turns eggs over something stirs/roots in the earth/burrowing rodent ill/beehive frozen for coldest-time-on-tall-stone/many little squeaking rodent lives in human cellar dying birthing mating caught in the cat's claws/_

It's too much. It's _everything_, every tree, every mouse, every monster, every blade of grass and rotting pine needle, every ebb and flicker of the Lifestream as it gives and takes, gives and takes, a million times each second. He _feels_ the mountain range, Nibelheim, he feels the forest and the stone and the secret heart of the Planet, twined in the river of life. The little human lives in the village are so _tiny_ – gods – and _how_ were there so many monsters in the Mansion so close to town? It's too much. Too much. Too much to feel, hear, know. He keens out loud, from the shock of it, barely able to comprehend any awareness of his body at all, not beyond _this,_ not beyond

_life/death/all creation_

especially not when he begins to fall in deeper, when _cold life on the cold-tall-stone_ expands to _blizzard on westward-cold-tall-stone/many-deaths_ and he _knows_ it all, the Planet doesn't think names or places, it just _knows_, knows every mountain like he knows his fingers, every river like a trickle of sweat down his skin, _everything_, and it's all crammed in all so loud so loud too much and then it's _red-stone-warm sheltered climate from sea air sand layered rock blood filters close to surface/satisfaction/life-death-life/no wrong-biting-parasite_ and suddenly Cloud comprehends the _agony_ of what is surely Mako Reactors, unendurable sores on the Lifestream, like a needle pulling the marrow from his bones-

He cries with both his voice, and something deeper. The background hum of the rot and birth and end of all nearby living and dying things, all faraway living and dying things, distances itself, still there, but unfocused. Something else comes to the foreground. Cloud shudders, feeling like every inch of his flesh, mind, magic and soul are being pored over, held in transient hands that turn him over and over, inspecting him with an omnipotent gaze.

_/wolf and man young/_ It observes. /_not-grown, strong for its age/descendent of chosen/new-guardian of the line/seeks control to protect/trembles in the pore where blood wells/stained in blood/ _Moments pass, he shivers as it turns him over and over in its power. _/young guardian well-born,/_ It decides, finally. _/will grow strong, strong life./_

And then the mako burn doesn't hurt any more.

It's the last thing he comprehends before all awareness falls away.

.28.

He never loses control again.

"My father told me about what it's like – conversing with the Planet when you're soaked with mako." Skulda tells him, wryly, when he questions her. She lays down and stretches out on the cool soil. "But no – I never needed it. I've listened to the Planet, but it was only whispers, words. Nothing like what you experienced – being drenched in Her awareness like that, having every inch of what you are picked apart and pieced back together. Certainly, I've considered doing it, but..." She shakes her head.

"Why would you _ever_ want to do that?" Cloud demands, incredulous, from where he sits beside her. All the pack are around them, and he has to push more than one curious nose away, all of them huffing excitedly at the overpowering smell of _life_ and _magic_ seeping from his skin which hasn't faded since the last moon. "It was...and I will _never_ forget it, but it was just-" He struggles to find the words, and fails. He hadn't woken for _weeks_ after the event – it had taken the moon to finally pull him from slumber.

"Because you will never, ever have the slightest difficulty with control again." She answers, with quiet envy. "Being perused by the Planet like that changes you, in many ways. Being exposed to Her awareness, too...I'm told that, when the Lifestream rises up at the full moon, your only difficulty is extricating yourself from the Planet's awareness."

He smiles slightly, remembering the first full moon afterwards, when he'd been positively _dizzy_ with the heartbeats and myriad energies all shifting and whispering around him. It had been difficult to realise he had a body at all, and beyond that...the stagnant stink of human magic was somehow petty, in comparison to how much _life_ flowed by unhindered by its foulness. "So you have to struggle at moon-days, ma?" He inquires, curious.

She nods, frowning. "Not a lot. It's better than it was. But sometimes, if I get carried away..." She shakes her head. "I've never lost control, not since I was three. But I can get close. Anyway – you're almost six now, Cloud, and you're getting strong. I think it's about time you started your human schooling...and that the pack and I go back to roaming the far territory."

He sits up immediately, back straight. "You're leaving?" He questions, disbelievingly, and despite himself a little hurt. "I'll be alone?"

Skulda sits up herself, to meet his eyes. "Yes, Cloud." She replies, evenly. "You'll be alone, for the school days. School is four days a week. The rest of the time, you can spend out of town. If you can track us and catch up to us, you can join us as you like. But you'll have to start hunting for yourself now, and keeping the home ranges."

Fear hits him, and he trembles a little, just for a moment. _You've been waiting for this,_ he reminds himself. _For years. Your whole life._ "Okay, ma." He accepts, lowering his head.

With that, she plunges a hand into her pocket and withdraws a tangle of various amulets and marvellous glimmering things. Including, to his shock, four new Materia. "Here, Cloud," She beckons, and sets to work fastening two leather and metal straps around each wrist, each adorned with one of the Materia. Then she puts the carved Strife sigil around his neck, just like that which her red orb is situated in, and starts braiding crystal and bone bead decorations into the shorter hair behind his ears. "Change, will you? I want to see how well the Transform array is working." Wide eyed, he obeys, and she nods with satisfaction at her handiwork, adding a few more decorations to his fur that wouldn't translate to human form.

Once she's done, he produces a large, reflective sheet of ice and stares at his distorted double. He's almost as thoroughly adorned as _Skulda_ is. "...why?" he struggles to ask, after shifting back.

She smiles at him fondly, and cards her fingers through his long hair. "You're growing up, Cloud." She says. "You may not age as fast as a wolf would, but you will be smart and powerful long before a human child would be, even if it takes you ten more years to grow fully. From next week, you'll be fending for yourself. You can be responsible with these Materia, now. And you can now begin to take up the duties of a Strife, even if you are still young."

.29.

Cloud walks, with a slow and measured stride, into the classroom, hearing the whispers erupt around him. His ears twitch at the sussurus of it, and he takes in all the scents of the children, and all the scents of who has been here on a regular basis. Like most buildings in Nibelheim, the school is small, built of cobbled mountain stone fitted together with mortar. Vibrant educational aids hang on the walls, defiant in their attempt to brighten up the room. Two windows adorn the left wall, their glass steamed up. Shinra's electric bounty shows in the four radiators and the electric lights overhead, which he stares at curiously. There are no electrics in the Strife house, after all. Then he turns away, sniffing, distracted despite himself by first the overwhelming smells of _curious/fear/bravado/nervous/anxious_ hammering him from all corners of the room, and then the older smells, _restless/young-energy-contained/mischief_ and the smell of the older person who most frequently stands at the front of the room, a man past his prime who smokes too much and has an unhealthy smell to him, and has been troubled by something recently.

Then Cloud pauses at a familiar scent. He turns his head to it, and inhales twice, effortlessly placing its source even as he discerns the pattern in it – a little black-haired girl, who stares as obtrusively as everyone else, but sits alone, and is not whispering. She smells like _small-fear/anxious/careful. _Then he remembers, and flushes red with guilt and embarrassment. He hesitates, and then determinedly makes his way over to her. _You're a Strife,_ Cloud reminds himself. _You're meant for protection, and tried to attack her._ And then he's at her desk, bearing the eyes of her and the whole class, who are disturbingly silent. He doesn't like silence – it's never a good sign, in the forest.

He sits down at the empty desk beside her, one of many in the room. "I remember you," He says quietly, so that others will be unlikely to hear with their pitiful human ears. "I nearly attacked you on the full moon, six months ago. I wanted to say sorry – I'm better at the moons now, it won't happen again."

Her mouth moves soundlessly for several moments, and her face is struck with such shock, he can _smell _it, that he quails a little inside, wondering if it were a mistake to speak to her. Then she stammers "That...that was y-you? The little wolf?"

"I'm not little!" He protests immediately, his Strife dignity falling away with astonishing speed. "I'm big enough to run and hunt alone, now!"

She continues to stare. Then, unexpectedly, she puts a hand over her mouth as the distinctive sound of girlish giggling erupts. It's an odd sound, but close enough to excited yipping that he can relate to it. "You're just like normal boys, aren't you?" She comments, smiling now. It's a definite improvement, but he can't help but be baffled by the sentiment. She smells sincere, though – and he is side-tracked for a moment, wondering at the lingering smells of her recent meals, and what strange things humans eat. Something sweet and almost like...bread, or wheat, for her morning meal. It's an oddly herbivorous smell, and he feels a momentary rush of disorientation, yet again, at the thought of something not-wolf being a person.

"I'm not a normal boy." He tells her, slowly, and she rolls her eyes at him. She has so many baffling facial expressions. His mother has the basics – but she, like him, spends far more time among wolves than people, and he imagines that the years have eroded at whatever she had learned in human schooling. As a result, he is left vaguely recalling some of the exile's motions for aid interpreting how her eyes had moved, which had seemed to convey exasperation, sometimes light-hearted mockery. They are far more human than his mother, after all, and had a lot of strange not-wolf body language they'd never quite managed to rid themselves of.

"I know that, silly!" Comes the reprimand, and then she's giggling again. She doesn't smell quite as excited as the yipping would indicate – so maybe it's different? Enjoyment, certainly. Amusement? Like a lesser laugh? Wolves don't laugh, but it's one of the things his mother _has_ translated to wolf-shape, and he knows the meaning of it well enough.

He is the one staring at her, now, as he tries to discern what exactly she is finding amusing. "What?" Cloud demands, a little put out. Is he so easily dismissed? Laughed at?

"Nothing," She replies cheerfully, and then holds out a hand. "I'm Tifa Lockhart." He recognises it as a human greeting thing, much like sane creatures would sniff each other on meeting, to catch the scent of character.

Carefully, he takes it, and shakes. He doesn't know how delicate human females are, so he is especially careful. "Cloud Strife." Their hands pull apart, and despite the odd look she gives him, it feels near obligatory for him to take his hand up to his nose to sniff at the closer smell of her, nose twitching at its story. The hand-shaking seems woefully inadequate, as a greeting gesture. He knows that humans have terrible noses, and couldn't hope to get what he could from a sniff. It feels almost unfair.

He wonders, honestly, how humans manage to cooperate or trust each other at all, if they know nothing about each other or their character when they meet. How do they know how they should behave? Or what they should do? If the stranger is one to test, to welcome, or to send away with fangs bared?

Tifa opens her mouth to say something, but then the teacher walks in, that greying man with the stench of smoke and malaise all over him. Cloud's attention turns his way, nostrils flaring, and that's the end of talking for the moment.

.30.

"You wear lots of jewellery." Tifa tells him seriously, during lunch break, as she settles on a little bench. The school's yard is the only playground in town, much to the dismay of most of the children, who have clearly begun to associate the feeling of their repressed energy with the institution. Cloud can empathise. He is not just a child, brimming with energy, but a _wolf_ child. Sitting still for the whole morning had felt _wrong_, like nothing had before, and had itched like a closing wound every passing minute. He honestly isn't sure how he'll endure several _years_ of this.

"...Yes." Cloud agrees, sitting cautiously beside her. He notices her pulling food out of the bag she'd bought with her, and blinks at it. He'd smelled it earlier, of course, but hasn't been sure why she was carrying food around. "So that's why you have that with you. You're eating it now?"

"Of course." She replies, glancing at him. "It's my lunch. Don't you have one?"

He shakes his head, yellow hair and its various adornments swaying with the motion. "No. I don't eat that much." It's the way of wolves. One big meal will keep for weeks, if necessary, though he is young and prefers to eat every few days, and as a werewolf, has to eat significantly more than a regular wolf would. It doesn't bode well for how much hunting he'll have to do, soon. For a moment, the prospect of conducting his own hunts in the treacherous mountains looms, ominously, over his head. Then he shakes it away. _Later_, he tells himself.

"You don't get hungry?"

"Well, sometimes. But if I get hungry, I'll just go kill something, and eat it. Like that pigeon." He points at one of the birds which habitually wanders the town, looking for leavings any leavings to peck at. They always make excellent snacks. Tifa looks slightly alarmed at the idea, though. Not a lot, because it isn't particularly prominent in her scent _or_ her posture.

"You...don't eat people, do you?" She asks, warily. He immediately bristles, feeling prickles of hurt and deep offence. He has heard the words of the humans, over the years. He has heard what people say.

"Of course not! Strifes are here to protect people, not eat them!" Cloud tries to stop himself from reacting too much. She doesn't look or smell concerned enough for her to be genuinely worried about it. _Just stories_, he thinks to himself angrily. _Just the things humans say, which aren't true._

Her hands come up. "Sorry, sorry. It's just, there's a lot of rumours, you know. Werewolf stories." She looks away, the gesture of which is very un-confrontational to Cloud's wolf mind. He settles himself and spares a quick glance around the small playground, where Nibelheim's meagre supply of children play. Many are quite conspicuously whispering and pointing at where he and Tifa sit. He sighs, uneasily feeling the absence of his ears, which would normally be low and to the sides, with his current discomfort. The lack of ears and a tail make him feel oddly crippled, when it comes to communicating. He knows humans have different ways for their bodies to express how they feel, but it's so _strange._

"What sort of rumours?" He asks after a moment, a bit more sharply than he intends. "That we're a disease? That we're just monsters pretending to be people?" She looks incredibly uncomfortable, so he shakes his head. "Never mind. We're not like that, though."

Tifa looks up. "You said you're better now?" Her eyes flicker with something; a hint of old fear. "Than when you almost attacked me, I mean. So you're like your mum, then? You can control yourself?"

"Yeah. I get dizzy now but I won't attack anyone." He confirms. "My ma was _so_ mad when I nearly did that, you know. She threw me into a mako pool." At her look of horror, because he's pretty sure something like that would _kill_ a human boy, he hastens to say "It's fine! I got better. She did it to help, I swear!" He doesn't want the girl to think badly of his mother, when she does only what she needs to.

The girl stares at him for a while, then blinks. "...If you say so." She says. He watches her look him over. "You don't _look_ all burned and mutated." She says, finally. "And you _really_ have a lot of jewellery. What's it for?"

He looks down, glancing at the many thick corded pendants he wears, along with the bands his wrists. "To look pretty?" He offers, helplessly, not sure what else jewellery would do. "I mean, only adult Strifes usually wear this much stuff, so there's that. And Ma says some of the talismans are blessed. And the main chest-piece has my Materia. See?" He taps one of the many on his chest. Tifa's eyes go impressively wide after what he's indicating registers.

"_Those_ are Materia?" She exclaims.

"Yup. Haven't you ever seen Materia before?" Cloud asks, amused. She shakes her head. "Well, these are all natural, so they're smaller than the manufactured ones, and more blue than green. The ones I have on my chest are all linked. Ma made it, with all this fancy wire stuff in the cord. I can't do it yet, but I'm learning."

"That's really cool." Tifa admits. "Doesn't it all just break when you turn into a wolf, though?"

He grins, and shifts, shuffling on the bench to not fall off. He is _significantly_ larger in wolf shape than human skin, after all. Tifa visibly starts beside him, staring with wide eyes. Several shrieks sound across the playground, and he turns to observe their sources curiously, sniffing at the _fear_ spiking into the air before looking back at Tifa. He sits back and paws at his chest-piece, which had started as one mass of cord and now was many, all woven together and interfering with his fur. He quickly shifts back, though, not wanting to cause too much fuss with the other children. "So, did you see?"

"...Yes," She nods quickly, her eyes still wide. "I think you got bigger since before."

Cloud straightens, pleased. Tifa laughs, any residual tension easing out of her frame, though the same can't be said of the other children. "Told you." He tells her, smugly.

"Yeah," The girl agrees, lips quirking. Then she hesitates in a way Cloud thinks might be shy. "Could you...turn into a wolf again? It'd be fun to play like that, I think."

He straightens, both very surprised and _very_ pleased. He had not been expecting such acceptance from a human child, much less the Mayor's daughter he'd almost gotten exiled a few months prior. He tilts his head at her, inhaling her hesitant sincerity, then smiles. A moment later he ripples back into fur and his young body, looking up at Tifa with his blue eyes, waiting. After a moment of abject staring, she reaches out, slowly, still fighting past her human uncertainty with wild things. He doesn't move, though, and is shortly leaning entirely against his will into her hand as she scratches at his ears.

"Just like a big puppy." She tells him, reluctant delight in her voice. "You're so _fluffy_, and your hair sticks up almost as much as it does when you're a person." He feels vaguely like correcting her on the counts of personhood, but in the end, she can make incorrect remarks all she likes if she keeps scratching his ears.

She stops, though, and before he can get too disappointed, Tifa is abandoning her lunch-box to concoct games that take full advantage of his wolf shape.

Even when the playground attendant, pale-faced and stinking of fear, draws close to ruin the fun and tell Tifa to get off his back, it doesn't diminish the enjoyment. And even though he's a wolf, and better games would be rolling and rough-housing, he's quite pleased with the alternative.

He thinks he'll have little difficulty, being friends with this human girl.

.

_end chapter_

_Next few chapters are going to be reaallly Tifa-heavy, just to warn you. Like seriously. Lots of Tifa. Also she's a year older than Cloud here, because._

_No romance though. My Tifa is awesome but I've never quite gotten over my aversion to that pairing._


	3. Chapter 3

Wax and Wane

Chapter 3

.

.31.

The cottage feels strange, now that he's the only one there, and all his senses remind him that not a single wolf sits at the forest edge. He sits on the fur-laden floor and stares around. It seems too silent, and all the kin-smells are days old. The meat from the last kill is gone; he will need to hunt soon. The feeling of _alone_ as it hits him is as startling as ever, frightening and unnerving all at once. Wolves are not meant to be alone. They're not for solitude. Instinct screams at him that he needs to follow the pack, before they won't accept him any more, and despite how much the feel of it claws at his skin he knows this emancipation is for the best. He is a Strife, and sometimes he will have to be alone. Being too much wolf is not good for him.

Cloud checks all of his Materia. The chest-piece, with its haphazard design of Fire, All, and Ice linked, then Earth and Lightning each linked to the All above, in a way modern smiths would call impossible. Restore and Heal, then Barrier and Seal on broad bands on his forelimbs. Two more on his rear ankles, bands firmly sheltering each a Time and Sense, and lastly at the base of his tail, Exit. Just in case.

Then, for the first time, he leaves the house and steps into the forest alone.

.32.

The first day, he makes no effort to hunt. He merely runs, halting to sniff and familiarise himself with the grounds closest to Nibelheim. He marks, when he feels he should. He finds the danger scents – a Zuu's droppings, the tell-tale scores Sonic Speeds leave on the trees, and most notably the scent of a dragon who emerges from her cave on occasion to hunt. He wants no business with those, yet, except maybe a lone Speed. But that's the issue – Speeds, much like wolves, are _never_ alone, and if you kill one you'd better be ready to kill the whole flock. With the amount of Materia he's wearing, he might just manage it, but he'd rather save that for later.

Cloud spends several hours, surveying the land, and catches scent of the path his pack took, seemingly going to the next mountain over. Their territory is very vast, after all. It has to be, to feed so many wolves.

In the end, hunger persuades him to follow the rabbit-trails to a hole by a tree that positively stinks of them, and he can smell many others nearby. It's cheating, really, but he's young and hungry and alone and feels absolutely no guilt in flushing half the warren out with fire and casting Slow on the ones he can reach from the holes they run from. In the end, he eats four rabbits that night, and buries three more near the cottage. Feeling somewhat taxed by the running and the MP drain of using a second level Time spell so much, Cloud returns to the fur-soft floor of the cottage and falls asleep almost immediately.

.33.

Adapting to a schedule is difficult. Those first days, scouting the nearest lands and taking after the easy prey, he sleeps late and wakes later, finding he has missed a good deal of the lessons and that both the teacher and Tifa are not very pleased with him.

"You need to come to school on time," She lectures him sternly, with the air of one who has heard it a good deal from her own parents. "How else are you going to learn?"

"I'll try." Cloud assures her, apologetic. He can't help it, though. Wolves sleep when they're tired and wake when they wake. Time of day has little meaning.

The fourth time he shows up late, though, Tifa gives him a bizarre metal contraption which not only tells time, but can be set to make noises at a certain time of day. It is called an alarm clock, and the sound it makes is absolutely _terrible_. The first time he is jolted awake by its screech he is half convinced a Zuu has broken into the cottage, and attacks the furs on the floor in panic before he fully wakes up, ripping out a few tufts. He's grateful for it, though, and he does get to school on time.

.34.

After two weeks of careful roaming, of reading the scent trails and the habits of the local wildlife, Cloud begins to feel more secure in his small territory. He hears the howls of the faraway pack sometimes, at night, and it eases the aching pit in him that longs for them. He howls with them, and hears the answer ringing over the mountain. His mother's howl is there, too, strident and powerful and reassuring.

Thus empowered, he leaves for the hunt straight after school, following the trails of a group of elk who had been tentatively moving into the area, since the departure of the pack. With nothing more than a single Haste, he brings down a stag over twice his size – and though he is left with a gore wound from the antlers, and several bruises, Cloud doesn't think he has ever felt so proud. That night, he sings his triumph to the sky, though no one answers.

"I heard howling last night." Tifa says by way of greeting in the morning, settling in the desk beside him as usual. "Was that you?"

"Yes," He answers, grinning, and promptly launches into the tale of his first proper hunt. Tifa, he is coming to learn, finds his stories of wolf-life quite exciting, even if she tries to pretend she doesn't.

.35.

"My mum wants to meet you." His friend tells him, awkwardly, after a great deal of pestering her for why she looks so shifty. "She's worried, I think. She's heard the stories a long time, and wants to make sure I'm okay, being friends with you."

Cloud falls quiet, pensive, and leans against the playground fence, grateful it's the end of the day and the children are vacating the area rapidly. "So...what?" He asks uneasily. "How does that work? I go to your house, or...?"

She nods, chewing at her lip. "Yeah, I think so. She says you should come round for dinner sometime. That's something humans do, to get to know someone." He files the information away, grateful for the little tips she has started giving to help him adapt. It helps more than she knows. He's _really_ not comfortable, though, and she notices it. "You don't like the idea?" Tifa inquires, clearly curious. She's just as inquisitive about wolf culture as he is about human.

The boy nods, ornaments clinking in his hair. "Going to someone else's territory, like that..." He looks away. "And your dad lives there, right? The mayor. He doesn't like Strifes, or wolves. It'll smell of him all over the house. I'd feel like I needed to get away. Or fight." And young he may be, and small, but Cloud doesn't doubt his ability to rip a fat human's throat out. Tifa wouldn't like it, though. "I just don't think it's a good idea." He says eventually, glancing the weight of it into her eyes.

She holds the gaze solidly for a few seconds, then sighs. "I'll tell her. Maybe later, when you're more used to humans?"

"Maybe," He answers doubtfully, but doesn't say more.

.36.

Cloud's mother seemed to have forgotten the schooling fees. Or else, they hadn't been there when she'd attended. Either way, he stirs awake one morning, immediately alert, when a foreign smell comes to his door and slips a letter through the mail-slot, and then hurries back down the path again, stinking of relief. He shakes the last of the drowsiness off and reads slowly, haltingly through the letter. He has quite a lot of trouble, though, and brings it to Tifa after school, who reads much better than he does.

"It says you need to pay the school money." She clarifies, after taking her time to soundlessly mouth the words, fingers running over the lines so she doesn't lose track. "Your first payment is due soon. Eighty-five gil."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "_Money._" He mutters. "It's the weirdest thing I've ever heard of."

"You're one to talk about weird, wolf-boy!" Tifa retorts, and shoves him off the bench. Far from being offended, he grins at her, slips the letter into his clothing, and then pulls her right off as well. No one is around to stop them from wrestling and tumbling around like a couple of wolf cubs, kicking delightedly at each other, and yet again the little girl goes home muddy and dishevelled.

Meanwhile, there is the issue of the money. Cloud sits alone, thinking, after his friend leaves, and puzzles out the possibilities in his mind. In the end, he leaves early for the forest, and shamelessly uses every ounce of magic he has to make an _absurd_ amount of kills. Over the next few days, he ventures to town carrying whole braces of rabbits, armfuls of unwary birds, and one day even a young stag slung over his shoulders. He haggles a good price for the meat and furs, both commodities in an isolated village like Nibelheim, where the only place they're to be found is the extremely dangerous wilderness.

It takes a few weeks, but he gathers more than enough money for the school fund, and his hunting skills take a massive leap upwards, to the point he isn't even using Materia half the time.

Then he considers – maybe, maybe, he can hunt monsters soon.

Catching the scent of mountain boar, though, quickly avails him of those plans. Boar are big, dangerous, and taste _delicious._

.37.

There are few non-magical animals more alarmingly brutal than an adult boar sow with piglets.

Cloud jumps out of the way of the sow's furious charge with wide eyes, scrambling up a tree and out of her reach. If he weren't a werewolf, with such sharp claws, she'd have _murdered_ him. He clings on, rigidly, as he stares down at the snorting, squealing picture of natural rage beneath him. And...oh, joy. Another adult. A male, more massive by an order of magnitude than the sow, but not quite as distempered as the raging mother. He supposes he can understand the reaction – he _had_ killed one of the piglets – but it doesn't exactly reassure him. Instead, he shifts into human limbs which are better suited for climbing, retaining claws, and pulls himself into a safer place among the branches, looking down, consideringly.

He throws his knife at her but misses by a wide margin. He'll have to work on that. Then, there really isn't a sensible option _other_ than using Materia. He sighs, chasing the male away with a bout of fire, and then Slows the sow, narrowing his eyes. He's determined to do this with as little magic as possible.

Cloud jumps down, rolling to grab his knife from the soil, and then leaps onto the slowed boar's back. While feeling the spell, her power isn't at all diminished, and he has to sink the knife into the flesh of her shoulder to get a grip on her as she bucks, trying to introduce him to her deadly tusks. He's seen what those can do to a wolf – he was there, as his mother skinned the corpse of a former packmate for his valuable fur after the tusks took his life.

He keeps a grip, grimly, and watches warily for the return of the male. Then he focuses, channels just enough _wolf_ for what he needs, and lunges.

Wolf-fangs sink into her neck like knives.

So it is that, after a great struggle, many bites, and two particularly horrible wounds to the stomach, Cloud hauls two massive boar corpses to the cottage, one after the other, and then three young piglets. He eats the young, and the mother, and keeps all of the tusks – but the male, he sells, and gets a very hefty price for.

.38.

A little more than a month into the friendship, Cloud finally feels comfortable enough with Tifa to invite her back to the Strife cottage, his heart of territory, now laden powerfully with his scent, his mother's and the packs' fading away.

She accompanies him up the narrow path cautiously, and after a moment tells him of the last time she'd done so, as a dare, and nearly got killed for it. She bears him no ill will for it, but enjoys watching him squirm nonetheless. Then she falls quiet as he leads her through the door. It's never locked – adults wouldn't dare steal, not when they could be traced back half a world by the scent they leave behind. And animals know the scent of wolf well enough to avoid it.

The cottage is tiny – minuscule, by her luxurious standards. It doesn't have a kitchen or a bathroom. It is largely a single room, with very little furniture to speak of, only drawers for storage, a work table, a few shelves, and a mantelpiece above the hearth. The floor is so thoroughly draped with furs that it's thicker than any mattress – and, certainly, it's what he sleeps on. There's a door to lead to the basement, but nothing else.

"It's nice." Tifa decrees finally, after a lengthy period of inspection. "Really small, but nice. Did your mother carve all those sculptures?" Because, surely enough, the cottage makes up for what it lacks in furniture with a whole lot of crafts. Wood carvings are everywhere, some figures sculpted out of stone, jewels, crystal, even Materia. His mother's half-finished metalwork lingers on the large table, and he hasn't touched it, but has messed around a little with a few pieces himself, and is currently working on carving an elaborate etching into one of the trees closest the house.

"Not all of them." He answers, going straight to the hearth to stare at the masterwork in the room, at its point of honour above the fire. "Some are heirlooms. Strifes long before us made them. That's mostly what's in the basement – storage, weapons, the things we've gathered over the long years. And some are really old. Like this." He indicates the centrepiece, as she draws beside him. It is a magnificent thing, etched into dark grey stone three feet tall and six wide. It depicts a woman, strong and proud, one hand on her spear and one reaching up to clasp into the ruff of the great wolf beside her, as tall at the shoulder as her head.

"What is it?" She asks, quietly, with respect. She seems able to sense the significance in it, and her eyes flicker between the etching and his face.

He stares straight ahead at the stone, and the single point of colour in it – a spherical crystal, pale blue-green, hanging between the woman and the wolf. "Mada-Skathi, and Fenrisúlfr." He answers, lowering his eyes in reverence. "The wolf-mother, and her wolf companion. Together, they birthed the first Strife, the first werewolf." He smiles, slightly. "All Strifes know the stories by heart."

Tifa looks at him, for a long while, in silence. Her young, round face is uncommonly intent. "Are they true?" She asks, after a moment. "Not just myths?"

Cloud glances at her, and shivers a little in trepidation. His mother has told him of what will come, when he is considered ready to keep his own borders. "They are _undeniably _true. But they're myths, too."

There is a serious silence for several seconds longer, before Tifa giggles at him. "You sound so old, saying all that stuff!" She comments, shoving at him. "I didn't think you _knew_ words like 'undeniable'."

He staggers and pushes her back, smirking as she falls with a squeak onto the furs. "I am a Strife," He declares airily and with great dignity, straightening and folding his arms. "I am the blood of wolves, and my family keeps the Mountain. I know _lots_ of big words."

Tifa pulls on his leg to trip him up, and shortly he is level with her, squawking as he kicks his foot out of her grip. They wrestle for a while on the furs, thoroughly refuting Cloud's claims to dignity with his childish play, and eventually they fall tired, panting side-by-side on the furs as they regain their breath. "So can you tell me?" She asks, after a while, her voice still a bit laboured. "The stories, I mean."

Cloud turns to look at her, pensively. The old stories are told to Strifes, by Strifes, but his mother has certainly hammered them into the heads of the exiles enough. He doesn't think it will hurt anything. After a moment, he speaks the familiar, well-worn words of the first story.

" 'In the oldest of days, when the Planet was still young, and the Ancients were pilgrims of life across the land-"

"What's an Ancient?" Tifa interrupts gracelessly, and he spares a moment to be appalled at the question. His mother had said that the knowledge of the Ancients had dwindled, but _seriously._

"They were the first people." He answers after a moment. "Blessed by the Planet. They spent their whole lives helping life – plants, animals, people, everything. Usually they travelled their whole lives like that, nurturing the Planet and keeping Her healthy. They could hear the Lifestream and the voice of the Planet all the time."

Tifa blinks. "What's the Lifestream?"

Cloud sighs. "Just let me tell the first story, and then you can ask questions, okay?"

.39.

"Do you believe it?" Comes the question, quite a while later. "All the stuff about the Planet being...alive, and the Lifestream?"

Cloud thinks back to the minutes, months ago, he'd been _immersed_ in the consciousness of the Planet, suffocating on it, and of all the full moons since...eyes narrow, he turns to face his friend squarely, looking her right in the eye. "I am totally, completely, undeniably sure it's real."

Something of his seriousness seems to register for her, and Tifa looks almost fascinated. "How are you so sure?"

"Because Ma threw me into a mako pool," He says, "and then told me to _listen._ And I heard it for myself." Ignorant modern idiots might pass it off as a hallucination from the mako, pass it off as a psychotic break or schizophrenia or whatever they wanted, but there is _no denying_ what it feels like to be saturated in the awareness of an entire world. Just the _thought_ of it makes him shudder, and he understands why his mother never chose the communion. "If you ever believe _anything_, Tifa, believe in the Planet, and the Lifestream, and the Ancients. Everyone else can take their stupid disbelief and _choke_ on it."

.40.

"It's my birthday soon," Tifa announces one day to a confused Cloud, and smiles as she goes on to explain the traditions humans have for the day they were born on. Essentially, it boils down to Cloud needing to prepare some sort of gift for his friend, lest she be offended.

He thinks about it, late in the evening, glancing around the small cottage for inspiration.

Tentatively, he touches the Restore on his wrist, which is still a fair way from being Mastered, but...

Tifa is young. She doesn't smell like the others yet, with stagnant magic never used, rotting away inside. But it's only a matter of time. _She should have Materia_, he thinks to himself, and also knows that he is in no way willing to risk a trip to the mako caves yet, where he might find something for her.

He reaches for his knife and digs it deep into his skin.

Two weeks later, he presents Tifa a gift of a newly spawned Restore, grafted into a wrist cuff of her own. She is very gratifyingly _thrilled,_ especially when he proudly informs her that the setting is his own work, the black leather too, and the Materia came from his own. He promises to teach her how to use it, and it isn't until later when she comes to his cottage and stares openly at the blood splatters outside the door that she realises what exactly he'd done to master his Restore.

She punches him and shouts at him a bit, but there's no real ire to it, and he can tell it's left a mark on her – this idea of blood, and what it can pay for.

.41.

Over their accumulating months of friendship, Cloud casts an approving eye at how much hardier Tifa steadily becomes. She met him a little girl, well-behaved with skirts and dresses and an immaculate appearance. Now, her mother has apparently surrendered to the inevitable and started giving her trousers to change into for after school. Now, she feels perfectly free to punch him in the face because she knows he can take it and even though she won't admit it, she enjoys the feeling of such unladylike violence. Now, she comes to the cottage and barely blinks at the occasional half-eaten carcass, frosted with the Ice spells he occasionally preserves the larger kills with.

Tifa _enjoys_ the rough-and-tumble games that only boys and wolves are meant to partake of, pushing and shoving and wrestling with a great deal of delighted shrieking and violence involved. He goes easy on her at first, pulling all of his kicks and punches and never being as brutal as a wolf cub would be in play. Still, she builds up scrapes and cuts and bruises and eventually stops reacting to any of them, often blinking when a scuffle ends at the surprising sight of a bleeding cut on her knee. He always Cured her before letting her leave, not wanting to worry her parents or incur their wrath, but now _she_ is starting to do that, with the Materia fixed into the cuff which she never takes off.

And, under his encouragement and assurances, she feels confident in growing more violent. He has absolutely no objection when she bites at his ears and arms and anything she can reach in their scuffles, and even bludgeons him with whatever she can find nearby. The sight of him bleeding ceases to bother her, because even without a Cure it stops pretty quickly.

Cloud has to be careful, though, all the time. Biting in play is as natural as anything for a young wolf, but he certainly can't do it, because even his human teeth are sharp and would quite easily break her soft skin. And whenever he notices an open scrape on her, he is mindful of it, because the smallest slip is dangerous.

He's careful to explain it to her, when she gets scrappier in the fights. "If I get even the tiniest bit of my blood on one of your cuts," He begins, "or, I dunno, if I got some spit in it, you'd probably become a werewolf. It might take you a while, but it'd happen. People who say you can only get infected by us in wolf form or at full moon are lying. It can happen any time."

Tifa mulls it over, seriously. "What if I bit through your skin, sometime?" She asks. "Would that do it?"

He considers it. "It's not as bad as the other way round. If you swallowed any of my blood, you'd probably just digest it and that would be that. But mouth skin is really thin. There'd be a good chance of it getting into a vessel somewhere. So, really, just don't bite that hard." He grins at her. "I don't think you'd manage it anyway, with your puny flat human teeth," And of course that's a perfect opening for her to shove him and start another fight.

That's how most of their playing goes – violently and by necessity in human form. She wouldn't be able to even _budge_ him in wolf shape, after all. But sometimes, when Tifa asks, he takes wolf shape and she climbs onto his back, holding tightly to the thick strap that supports his chest-piece, and shrieks with delight as he runs and runs and _runs_, with all the breathtaking speed of a young werewolf. And if he sometimes casts Haste to run even faster, well, she certainly doesn't complain.

.42.

One night, out hunting, Cloud straightens with surprise at the wolfsong resounding across the mountain. It's far, far away – but close, much more so than it has been for _months._ The next night, they are closer still.

His mother is returning.

He marks the nights with anticipation, day by day, until one afternoon he returns back from school to find Skulda moving to greet him, first bowling him over and licking and scenting him and then embracing him with open arms. "Cloud!" She laughs with delight, looking him over for the wear that three months of hunting have left on his clothes. "You look good. Hunting is treating you right, then? Any monsters yet?"

He grins, relaxing into her side. "Not yet. I did take on a couple of boar, though, a while ago. They were a _pain._ I've got the tusks in a drawer." And so of course she insists on seeing them, and coos over the size of them, praising him for the hunt and how well he's doing.

"So, how are you settling into human life?" She asks, nose twitching. "You made friends with the Lockhart girl? Her smell is all over the place. A little bit of blood, too. I hope you're being careful."

"You know I am, Ma." He answers, lips quirking. "You wouldn't have thought it by looking at her, but she fights pretty well. And I gave her the spawn from my Restore for her birthday. She's doing alright with it."

"Hmm." Skulda looks him over with a scrutinising eye. "Well, that's surprising for the tiny frightened thing I saved from you. Be careful, though. Her dad's a dick and could make a lot of noise if he decides he doesn't like you. I'm glad you've made a human friend, though. I never really did."

He glances at her curiously, but doesn't ask. "So, how long are you here for?"

Skulda grunts, stretching out on the furs for a moment before sitting up. "Just today, to check up on you. You're six years old now, by the way, in case you didn't know. Also," She adds as an afterthought, as though he hadn't been able to tell the signs, "winter is coming."

He rolls his eyes, a gesture picked up from Tifa. "I know."

.43.

Just as quickly as she'd come, his mother leaves, and he's alone again with nothing but her lingering scent. He tells Tifa about it and is amused to discover she seems pretty apprehensive at the idea of his mother, and very glad that she'd not lingered long enough to demand a meeting with her son's new friend.

"My ma is only scary if you annoy her."

"Your mum is scary no matter what she does."

He rolls his eyes at her, and pulls her by the wrist to the tree he's been throwing his knives at for the last few months to practice. He found a set specifically intended for it in the basement, and hasn't left home without them since. "Come on. I thought I'd show you how to throw knives today."

.44.

On the full moon days for the last few months, Cloud has skipped class. The first time he returns after a three day absence, the teacher scowls at him and snaps "Strife! I see you finally decided to grace us with your presence! Do you have any explanation for your deplorable absence?" and all the children in the class look at him, some snickering at his predicament.

Cloud, in turn, stares at the man, and says very slowly "it was full moon. I was a wolf, you see." It is a great pleasure to watch the teacher's face turn white with fear – he is usually quite content to forget that he has a werewolf in his class – and then snap on with lessons as though he'd never said anything. Tifa looks at him curiously, but doesn't ask him about the full moon.

The second time, the teacher seems better informed, and just glances at him, tight-faced, before starting class. That time, Tifa asks about it.

"If you're fine with control now, how come you can't come to class?"

"I'd be a wolf. It's kind of hard to hold stuff when you don't have fingers."

"You could at least listen, though." She points out, reasonably.

Cloud flashes a grin at her. "I wouldn't learn a thing. I'm not dangerous for the full moons, but stuff does go a bit crazy in my head. I'd be totally out of it."

The third time, she just asks how the moon had been, and he shrugs, saying "eh, the usual" and being done with it.

The fourth time, Cloud sits panting on the doorstep on the morning of the second day, head swimming as always, and ravenously finishes the deer he'd hunted on the first night. Full moons have a nasty way of making you hungry, and it's not surprising – a werewolf's senses are strained to the maximum, their adrenaline maintains a near-continuous dump into their bloodstream, and his brain has to deal with the overwhelming torrent of _life/death_ swimming around him, and the deafening echoes of the Lifestream.

He itches to run, and does exactly that, sprinting aimlessly into the forest, nose and ears working in overdrive. He chases the trail of a mountain goat intently, and probably isn't paying enough attention as he runs nearly head-first into an idle flock of five Speeds, which do not take at all kindly to his presence.

Thankfully, he is as always fully outfitted with Materia, and barely hesitates to set them all on Fire and then Haste himself, skittering out of their way to liberally throw Slows at them and then blitz them with Ice from a distance. He feels jumpy, jittery, flighty and full of energy in a way that can only compare to other full moons, and practically _dances_ around the furious avians, exhilaration pounding through his body with the rapid beat of his heart, and it seems like his magic is a bottomless well, his spells stronger, his feet faster, and his teeth just _sharper_ than they usually are.

He barks a wolf-laugh, thoroughly enjoying himself, and immerses himself in a battle that lasts three hours. He kills three and the last two cut their losses, escaping before he can catch up to them.

Hauling the bodies back to the cottage is considerably less enjoyable, but he's on such a high from the moon and the successful hunt of a whole flock of monsters that he honestly doesn't care. The avid pumping of his blood does something to clear the Planet-haze from his thoughts, and after taking a few moments to lick the worst of the blood from his fur, Cloud entertains a notion which makes him feel very mischievous indeed.

Cheerfully, Cloud trots down the path into Nibelheim, passing by the occasional passer-by who first glance at him disdainfully, then double-take as they realise it's the full moon and take on the distinct scent of fear. Whenever anyone looks too alarmed, though, he sits down and cocks his head at them, doing his best to look as kind and unassuming as possible, and after a while trots off again, paying them no mind.

The village is small, and it doesn't take him long to reach the school. He sits in the bush behind the bench he and Tifa make a habit of claiming, relatively well-hidden, and passes half an hour waiting with his senses trained on the door. Sure enough, the bustle of children from the older class emerging for lunch break soon erupts into the playground, and mere minutes afterwards the younger class come as well. He keeps very still and watches. Tifa walks out sedately, clutching her lunch-box, and makes her way over to the bench in a daydream, clearly lost in her thoughts.

He smiles a wide wolf-grin, and erupts, shoving her lightly as he leaps over the bench. She shrieks a little and, in a reflex built of their constant play-fights, punches in his direction. Some of the other children, alerted by the noise, his size and the sudden movement, also scream a little, but he doesn't particularly care about them. He just watches Tifa, grinning as his tongue lolls out, as she steadily realises that _yes_, he's there, and _yes_, it's full moon. Only a few of their classmates also seem to make the connection, gathering into a frightened cluster, but he's not doing any harm.

"...Cloud?" She asks, disbelievingly, once the shock wears off. "What are you doing here? I thought you got all dizzy on moon days."

He nods, and with considerable effort, scratches _THOUGHT SAY HELLO _in the dirt with a claw, the letters all wildly messy and near indiscernible. She giggles at it, and reaches out to scratch at his ears, a very welcome attention. He still feels more energetic than is anywhere close to fair, but such attentions would relax anyone. He allows his head to drop into her lap with a sigh, hearing her little huff of amusement as she buries her hands in the thick fur around his neck and scratches liberally.

"You look different at full moon." She comments. "Bigger, for one thing. And did you know your eyes glow? It's almost like SOLDIER."

He rolls the aforementioned eyes. He thinks Tifa has a bit of a crush on the imposing General Sephiroth from the papers – a few weeks ago, he couldn't get her to shut up about SOLDIER until he suggested that she just join it, and get her obsession done with.

"And – oh, _Cloud!_" It sounds scolding, and he lifts his head only to have it pushed aside and he feels a twinge of pain as she pokes at one of his wounds, on the side of his neck. He can barely feel them, and they're healing, so he isn't particularly bothered by them. "_What_ have you been doing? And _why_ haven't you Cured yourself yet? Honestly, I can't understand you sometimes, you idiot wolf!" He feels an ease to the healing-itch as she casts her own, relatively weak Cure over his body, and sighs at the slight relief. Cloud nudges at her hand gratefully, only to have his head shoved away again. He grins at he as she pulls out her lunch, and backs off to scratch _KILLED THREE MONSTERS_ in the earth.

She reads it, eyebrows raising, and rattles off into an impressed monologue, just talking, since he can't exactly speak at the moment.

It doesn't take long, though, for the playground attendant to call a teacher and for them both to haltingly, anxiously, approach the pair, keeping a safe distance as their eyes dart quickly between them. "Miss Lockhart! It's full moon, please get yourself away from the wolf this instant-"

"He's not dangerous, sir." Tifa interrupts, which is really quite rude by the standards of human manners, especially for females. Then she curls her fingers into his fur as if to demonstrate. He looks across at the adults innocently, and even lets loose a particularly endearing whine. "He only doesn't come to school because he gets dizzy."

They make several more, clearly frightened, attempts to get her away from him, until he gets vaguely annoyed. And stands up, straightening to full height.

On a regular day, he is almost the size of your usual Nibel wolf, only discernibly young by his oversized ears and paws. Today, he is larger. Not a great deal. But he is not a particularly reassuring sight for those afraid of werewolves.

After staring him in the eye for a few moments, the two lose their reluctance to leave and quickly depart. Tifa giggles as they go, shaking her head, and mutters "it's just silly. Here I am, a little girl, and they're more scared of you than even I was when I met you."

If only all humans could have such a refreshing attitude.

.45.

"It was funny, seeing everyone fall over themselves." Tifa says to him, a few days later. "But my parents didn't like it. My mum isn't saying, but I think she's getting pretty worried. I think you should come over. Maybe not for dinner, but just to meet them."

It takes her several days of nagging, but eventually he concedes, and so he finds himself slinking a few steps behind Tifa as, after school, they walk to her house. It is large and imposing, and nothing like his little stone cottage on the forest edge, and he had been correct to assume that it smells very much like Tifa and her parents. His familiarity with Tifa's scent eases the discomfort slightly, but the moment she leads him to the door and knocks, Cloud feels like his hair is standing on end even more than usual from the nerves. Instinct screams _territory-of-other_, and adrenaline spikes in preparation for the inevitable fight-or-flight that wolf instinct says should happen when someone else's territory is invaded.

Instead, a woman who very much resembles Tifa opens the door. She smiles warmly at her daughter, greeting her, and then her eyes slide to Cloud. She looks a little surprised, for whatever reason. "You must be Cloud," she ventures, and after a brief pause waves the both of them in. "I'm Mara Lockhart. It's nice to finally meet you."

His mind stutters over itself for a few moments before he manages "you too, ma'am," earning him a smile from both Tifa and her mother.

They are ushered into the kitchen, where Tifa seats herself at the table with the evidence of long habit, pulling him to the chair next to her, as Mara erupts into a bewildering stream of chatter which somehow explains so much about Tifa's occasional rambles. After a few seconds of reeling, Cloud makes an effort to actually hear what she's saying. "-and Tifa has always liked her chocolate chip, but I'm not sure if you have any...special dietary requirements?"

"He's not a dog, mum." Tifa says, clearly having fun. "He'll be fine with what I have."

"If you're sure," The woman agrees easily, and after a minute or so presents them both with three 'cookies' and a small glass of milk. Tifa happily assaults one of the biscuits, but Cloud takes longer, glancing at the plate bemusedly as his nose works. He's smelled these on Tifa before, but he hadn't imagined he would be eating any. After a pause for thought, he reaches out and takes a bite from one, chewing slowly. It crunches, and is rather jarringly sweet, with little chips of vibrant flavour standing out boldly. _So this is chocolate_, he muses to himself, intrigued, and works his way steadily through the biscuits.

"You've never had cookies before, Cloud?" Mara asks curiously, settling herself on one of the opposite chairs.

He pauses to think. "This is probably the first non-meat thing I've eaten since I was a...baby." he admits, and is gratified to see her look more curious than uneasy.

"Is that usual?" She asks, lacking any duplicity. "With human children, they need to eat a bit of everything if they're going to be healthy."

Cloud looks at Tifa for guidance, unsure how her mother will deal with the details of wolf life, but only gets an encouraging nod. "Well...um, wolves are carnivores. Meat's basically all they can eat." He answers, slowly. "Werewolves are a bit different, because we have our human form...but, well, we _can_ eat other things, and they taste fine, but they don't do us any good. We can't really digest them in large amounts."

Mara mulls it over. "I see." She says, thoughtfully, and then launches off into a long, speculative monologue interspersed with questions. He has _never_ met anyone that talks as much as Missus Lockhart does, and it's almost startling. She doesn't sound hurried or excited – she just talks as if she's thinking out loud, speech occasionally veering off on strange tangents which seem to come from nowhere. It really does baffle him, but after a while it becomes almost reassuring, just to listen and be so rarely expected to speak. Tifa's amused glance says everything he needs to know about how common this is.

After a while, though, the chatter is interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a few seconds pass between then and the kitchen door opening. Cloud heard him coming quite a lot earlier than the other two, and glances at him uneasily as his scent drifts over. He's not happy.

"Dad!" Tifa pipes up, breaking the moment of silence.

"Tifa." He greets, gruffly, eyes fixed unwaveringly on the interloper. He can't help but tense, nerves quivering to run, fight, _anything._ "Cloud Strife. You've grown a lot since I last saw you."

Cloud doesn't particularly remember the man, so he assumes it had been in his infancy. Still, words fail him, and he simply lowers his head in a move which exposes too much of his nape for his liking, but he thinks the mayor will recognise the submissive gesture at least a little. Having to give it _rankles_, but he doesn't want to cause Tifa any trouble.

Seconds pass in uncomfortable silence, before Mayor Lockhart grunts and leaves the room. It persists for a while longer, before Mara attempts to get talking again as if the tension had never intruded. It's clear that her rambling doesn't work when forced, though, so she gives Tifa a half-hearted pat and sends them off to 'do their thing'.

Tifa introduces him to her piano while he is still being quiet, going off into her own little monologue about the lessons she's had and how she can't really play much yet but she likes how it sounds, anyway. Her room is almost as large as his house, well-kept and _so_ very human, and the only thing which comforts him even slightly is that it smells unwaveringly of her.

The piano is fascinating, though, with its clear notes of sound. Wordlessly, he allows himself to be pulled into learning the simplest of tunes Tifa knows. Twenty or so minutes later, Mara comes to investigate, shoos them aside, and proceeds to play. Cloud listens, stunned, as he watches her fingers across the keys, as deft and graceful as a wolf in the forest, and weaves a gorgeous procession of sound which for some reason puts rain into his mind. Then she smiles at them cheerfully, and departs as quickly as she had arrived.

"...She's way better than you at that." Cloud comments quietly, the first words he's said since the mayor unsettled him so, and receives a solid smack round the head for his efforts.

"I know." Tifa grouses. "But she's been playing for years and I've just started. It only makes sense." She looks at him then, in concern. "Are you okay, Cloud? You seem really shy."

He shrugs, tentative. The wolf in him hates being out of his territory like this, in a home where he clearly isn't welcome by the resident alpha. "I like your mum," he offers. "She's nice."

It goes unsaid that he has no such opinion of her father. Which he _doesn't_, not in the least. Mayor Lockhart smells like hatred and lies and fear, and he doesn't want to be near the man unless he absolutely has to be.

_.end chapter._

_Today on 'My Childhood Dreams that Never Came True: made friends with a giant wolf who came to school to play with me!'_

_Seriously though, I bet you're all super jealous of Tifa now, having her own fluffy giant wolf best friend._


End file.
